Get your Business Ready for the Holidays and the New Year
The leaves just began to fall. A slight chill drifts through the wind. You check your calendar and that’s when you see it. The Holiday season is coming up. Which means it’s time to get your online store ready!
In this article, we will provide tips for preparing your website for the coming Holidays and beyond.
Schedule then Act
Before creating content and posting, think about your plan in advance. Content reaching a high ranking in the search engine takes time. Plan according to how much in advance you need to post to have your content rank highly during consumer searches.
Recommended Post Schedule
- 45 Days: Save-the-date promotions to newsletter, social media, and website calendar.
- 7 Days: Post events and other upcoming promotions to social media and/or via email.
- 1 Day: Remind your audience about the event/promotion to social media
Sticking with a set schedule will allow you to keep ahead of competitors and boost your content as time grows closer to the Holidays. Once you have your schedule set, you are ready to create content.
Create Landing Pages
It’s time to decide what content is to be featured this upcoming holiday season. Creating landing pages that feature promotions and specials pertaining to the theme is one of the best ways to drive up engagement and ranking. Such pages would include ‘Best Gifts for Family’, ‘How to Celebrate the Holidays on a budget’, or ‘Newest Holiday Deals’.
Update Your Structured Schema
When adding a product page, remember to include the product schema (A string of code that tells Google what the page is about). The schema will highlight the product in search results. Another thing to remember is to include a review schema. If a product has a five-star rating then consumers will want to know. Both the review and product schema will highlight in search results, thereby directing future consumers to the page.
Reuse, Recycle, Repurpose
Making new content is helpful, but it is not required. Re-using old content from previous holiday posts is another option. As long as the content remains relevant to the theme then it can be used. If there is an option to re-publish and post new content then do it. New landing pages are great tools to re-link old pages to new ones.
Social Media Promotions
Use social media for all its advantages. Platforms such as Pinterest tend to have higher viewer numbers during the holiday season than any other time. Consumers utilize Pinterest as a visual search engine for gift ideas. Adding landing pages to this kind of platform will help in increasing engagement and attraction to any business website. Aside from Pinterest, sharing on other platforms (Facebook, Instagram, etc) will help boost consumer attraction.
Check Website Speed
Double, no, triple check the website’s speed and connection. Speed is crucial to any website but becomes more essential during the holiday season. Consumers want fast service and a website that takes longer than usual to connect and load will only drive away business. So before enacting the holiday season SEO schedule, make sure the website has excellent speed and good connection, both for mobile and desktop.
Measuring Success
Establish a measurement plan. Evaluating performance and results before, during, and after the holiday season is vital to a successful business. Document and track all actions the business takes. The results and analytics will be used when planning for next year or even the next holiday.
Start the year strong
The results are in and you successfully marketed your business during the holidays, but now what? What happens when the holiday season is over? Answer: you start your new year on top. When marketing for the holidays, remember that you are not only planning for this particular season. Anything you slow down or increase in your marketing mix during the holidays will also determine how weak or successful the beginning of the new year will be.
